Warp Spasm
This was my first large project in Quake. It's a handful of maps based on the Quoth mod and its gruelling, attrition gameplay and grim style proved to be reasonably popular. I worked alongside AguirRe (engine) and Sielwolf (testing) to put together six large maps.
I was pretty green, so the additional content comes from the Quoth mod. I decided early on to focus on what I like doing best - doing inventive and immersive gameplay. This means that the visuals aren't great, but this kind of blurs into the background as the player dungeon crawls deeper into the massive maps.
At the time, they were the biggest possible within the limitations of the BSP1 format - as a joke, the Nightmare Tangents map has 666 enemies on hard mode.
The reception was a bit polarised - a lot of players hated playing a level for 1-2 hours while others allowed themselves to be subsumed by these environments and the bloody slaughter they were filled with.
Either way, anyone who played through the pack in its entirity tended to be a bit shell shocked afterwards, which is what I was going for.
I didn't want to compromise when making these, and built them for myself, so it was a nice surprise when some players 'got' what I was aiming for.
"Probably the most evil and hostile atmosphere a Quake release ever had. This episode is built upon Quoth code and monsters. It comes with "dark ambient" music which adds to the feeling. The levels are huge and well designed, and the number of monsters in each one is extreme. An essential release, but clearly not for everyone."
Quaddicted
Videos
Here are a couple of gameplay videos by Skacky (great Quake mapper) where he discusses the mod and guns down masses of angry monsters.
Speedrun!
And here is Orbs trashing the entire pack (apart from the secret map) incredibly quickly. It's always great to see these types of videos because not only has someone been interested enough to take the mod apart enough to understand it, they've done it in such a way that the creator never envisioned, and therefore know more than they do about the mod, but in a fundamentally different way.
I admit I'm not completely sure how all the shortcuts he uses work.
Also, the shortcut in Nightmare Tangents (WarpD) wasn't originally possible. I had added a noclip ceiling that was removed once the player attained the upper floor. But then I removed it to keep things fun for speedrunners, which seems like it was a good call :)
The Harsh Angled Edge (WarpE) run is my favourite since it has a very creative solution.
Story
I wrote quite a bit of backstory for the mod. the basic idea was an expansion of the Quake idea - "humanity invents dimensional portals and hilarity ensues". I explored the idea that it was ultimately human nature that becomes corrupted, devolving into violence, insanity and losing its humanity after contact with the denizens of the other places.
All good nihilistic Lovecraftian stuff, although the bad use of bad language bothered some readers. As well as the juvenile attitude and general immaturity. A few did ask me to continue writing though, so maybe I'll revisit it one day.
You can find links to the stories at the top of this page.
Links
Here you can find links to places where I recieved help, tools, reviews etc.
Bengt provided the engine with improved limits (which is a trend that continued afterwards with other modern engines).
Func_Messageboard is where all the mappers hang out and the primary source for new Quake maps today.
Underworld Fan's is a now disconinued site that did level reviews back then.
Quaddicted remains the difinitive Quake archive amd hosting point for a tonne of content - thanks Spirit!
Quoth is the mod I based warp on, using its monsters, weapons and features to build upon.
